Phil Baroni arrested for murder

[BomberPat]

Phil Baroni arrested in Mexico for allegedly murdering girlfriend (mmaweekly.com)

 

Newspapers in Mexico have broken the story that Phil Baroni has been arrested for allegedly murdering his girlfriend following a fight in their hotel room. 

A lot of talk on social media that he's been damaged for a long time; talk of CTE and mental breakdowns.

[WeeAl]

Fucking hell. The poor woman. She's yet another unfortunate victim of someone from this sport, of which there have been so many. Horrible news. 

[Nick James]

He was fighting in a bare knuckle event in my hometown (a small Yorkshire village) not too long ago against a lad I went to school with, no surprise he may have CTE if thats what he's been up to lately. Terrible, terrible news. 

[wandshogun09]

Horrible news this. Baroni never seemed the most stable of people even in his younger days but CTE obviously won’t have helped matters. Poor woman. Awful.

Josh Barnett’s tweeted this today…

Sadly, I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg and we’ll be seeing more and more tragic stories like this. Both in terms of fighters own health deteriorating and, unfortunately, some of them damaging other people. I can’t remember if it was someone on here or Twitter, but someone recently was saying about MMA still being a relatively young sport and, while Dana Wifebeater talks about there never being a death or serious injury, the dark side that we’re all guilty of ignoring is the long term damage and CTE. We were never gonna see the true long lasting effects of the toll the sport takes until these guys get older. This November will mark 30 years since UFC 1 and since Christmas we’ve already lost Stephan Bonnar and now this Baroni tragedy. There was that story about Spencer Fisher and his struggles post-fighting as well. And I’m sure there’s a bunch of similar cases that just haven’t been widely publicised. Between Bonnar’s death, which is no doubt linked to CTE, this Baroni thing and the recent Dana White stuff, even as big a fan of MMA as I am I’m finding myself genuinely questioning why I watch this shit anymore. 

[chokeout]

Absolutely. To be honest we've probably already seen the effects of the earlier UFCs but haven't really drawn attention to it. The earlier fighters from the first events were already bruisers and sadly I don't think many people would really be shocked by them being 'punch drunk' and they wouldn't get a lot of press attention because of how short their stints in the spotlight were (and we've already started to see fighters from the earlier days dying in their early to mid 50s) But now we're seeing the actual athlete fighters who were put on posters and marketed on primetime TV.

Tito and Chuck are walking PR disasters just waiting to happen. Rampage was acting erratic a decade ago. People who made a career out of getting hit hard (and turned into highlight clips on Facebook for revenue) like Don Frye and Mark Hunt are going to be suffering.

Bonner dying is the start of the well known guys, post UFC explosion, showing the effects of getting hit with 4oz gloves. It's only going to get worse

[Egg Shen]

2 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

Someone recently was saying about MMA still being a relatively young sport and, while Dana Wifebeater talks about there never being a death or serious injury, the dark side that we’re all guilty of ignoring is the long term damage and CTE. We were never gonna see the true long lasting effects of the toll the sport takes until these guys get older. 

yeah, the defence of MMA was always "but its safer than boxing", usually tied to the fact that people were not dying during competition. The potential long term effects were seemingly ignored or glossed over

Baroni (who was always a favorite of mine) was pretty much celebrated for his bility to take damage and be willing to dish it out in his hey day (as many are today) you just never think it'll lead to something like this. Just the saddest end to his story.

 

[Egg Shen]